This Carnie Trash Life

On the other side of the mountain, in a spot so desperate and wild,
there lived a lady with long black hair, who was kindling a child.
There was nothing in the cold dark shack except a bed she’d made of leaves,
and she cried herself to sleep at night wiping tears upon her sleeve.

The man who’d filled her up with seed, he’d left her there alone,
and went back out into the old cruel world to try and make his bones.
He would love to see her dressed up, in pretty clothes oh so fine,
but he couldn’t even afford a rose, nor a bottle of drugstore wine.

His only job had been as a garbage man who made the morning rounds,
his only friend in the world a lonesome braying hound.
He scraped a few dollars for the bar, to try and forget his plight,
it warmed his belly from the chill outside but gave his mind no respite.

Back in the shack with a panic attack his lady was going wiggedy-wack,
afraid the dream of her life was a train slamming into a dead end track.
So she crept down off the mountain and she made her way into town,
looking for her man, and when she found him, he was dressed like a flipping clown.

He had seen the circus poster scabbing off the timber of the telegraph pole,
thought he might as well join, if only to fulfill the terms of his parole:
for he had once robbed a man just for kicks, outside the five and dime,
and she had a thing for bad boys, it made her hot to know he’d done time.

People say the road is no place for having kids and growing a family tree,
and people say if you fall in love with a rambling rover you will never be free,
but the tattooed ladies took her in, and the gypsy queen read her sweaty palm,
and in the chaos of the freakshow life, she found her center of calm.

​So they traveled inside a trailer and heard people call them carnie trash,
and made due with what the world gave them, never quite flush with cash.
Their baby girl was born under the big top, under the great plains open sky,
and they were a freaky folk family, until they met their sweet bye and bye.